An ICML proposal: yearly surveys

I’d like to propose that ICML conducts a yearly survey similar to the one from 2010 or 2012 which is reported to all.

The key reason for this is information: I expect everyone participating in ICML has some baseline interest in how ICML is doing. Everyone involved has personal anecdotal information, but we all understand that a few examples can be highly misleading.

Aside from satisfying everyone’s joint curiousity, I believe this could improve ICML itself. Consider for example reviewing. Every program chair comes in with ideas for how to make reviewing better. Some succeed, but nearly all are forgotten by the next round of program chairs. Making survey information available will help quantify success and correlate it with design decisions.

The key question to ask for this is “who?” The reason why surveys don’t happen more often is that it has been the responsibility of program chairs who are typically badly overloaded. I believe we should address this by shifting the responsibility to a multiyear position, similar to or the same as a webmaster. This may imply a small cost to the community (<$1/participant) for someone's time to do and record the survey, but I believe it's a worthwhile cost. I plan to bring this up with IMLS board in Beijing, but would like to invite any comments or thoughts.